It's amazing that all this change is happening so suddenly and so profoundly.
You can say that again. In a way it's back to the future... Everything old is new again, history repeats itself... thin clients (tablets instead of terminals) and mainframe (cloud instead of s370). Of course it's much more sophisticated than before, but the idea is the same.
HP said, I want to be in the mainframe business and not the terminals cause I just got my a$$ kicked.
Ugh. What a failing ad campaign. Not even close to the iPad commercials in effectiveness. All it managed to convey was that HP could only afford to hire second-tier celebrities to endorse their new non-iPad.
I think Russel Brand is a very funny guy and makes the ads very interesting. He did a great job demonstrating the features of the TouchPad. He made the TouchPad seem like a fun and useful thing to have. That was the whole point of the ads. I feel they were successful. Whether HP put them out there often enough to get traction was a different story.
The iCade seems like a cool, little novelty item, I've read about it before. The problem is that there needs to be a standard which virtually all game developers support. When the iCade was released it only supported the Atari games, a few of which I've bought.
Some big company should make a decently priced bluetooth controller for iOS and get a whole lot of developers to support it in their games. That would sell a lot I'm sure. Some iOS games are great with Multi-Touch, but there are other types of games where a controller would be awesome.
I even mentioned that Nintendo should release an iOS bluetooth controller and release some of their classic games. They would make a killing, though it's very unlikely that it's going to happen anytime soon.
You can say that again. In a way it's back to the future... Everything old is new again, history repeats itself... thin clients (tablets instead of terminals) and mainframe (cloud instead of s370). Of course it's much more sophisticated than before, but the idea is the same.
HP said, I want to be in the mainframe business and not the terminals cause I just got my a$$ kicked.
Yes...the thin-client/mainframe versus tablet/cloud parallel is interesting. The question of who will make the tablets is also a parallel to the old days too. Much like Apple more or less invented the "home computer" business with other players like Commodore and Radio Shack trying to get in for a while only to fall off when IBM "standardized" the PC/DOS paradigm...so too now do we have Apple more or less inventing the tablet computer with a bunch of other players coming on but starting to fall off. However, the difference is that there is no "IBM/Microsoft" heavyweight coming into the mix today to knock Apple off the tablet throne like they did way back then. Microsoft to tablets today is not what Microsoft to desktops/laptops was back when they became dominant. They're an inept bumbling organization with a track record of horrendously bad operating systems (even the somewhat respected Windows XP sucks when compared to OS X). Today's Google/Motorola is not going to be to tablets what Microsoft was to desktop/laptops back then either because Android and this ridiculous "open source" paradigm have already lead to failed offerings and fragmentation. Plus, I have a lot more respect for Microsoft than I do for Google (and that is saying something because Microsoft's horrendous quality in Windows OS drove me to Macs where I am now very happy). But at least Microsoft intended to be a real OS company...where Google just wants to sell ads and collect user information to use, perhaps abuse, in ways that scare me. Plus I like and respect Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and working with the .Net Framework. They're not perfect, but their biggest problem is not themselves but the OS upon which they run.
I think Russel Brand is a very funny guy and makes the ads very interesting. He did a great job demonstrating the features of the TouchPad. He made the TouchPad seem like a fun and useful thing to have. That was the whole point of the ads. I feel they were successful. Whether HP put them out there often enough to get traction was a different story.
Hardly any people know who the hell Russell Brand is and those ads were a terrible failure in every imaginable way. I don't really know who he is, besides knowing that he's some English actor or comedian that has been in some really terrible movies.
And they were certainly out there enough, because quite a few of those TouchPad ads popped up on my cable channels quite frequently, much to my annoyance. I also remember seeing a ton of Xoom ads which were constantly bombarding various TV channels. I've seen more ads for TouchPads and Xooms than I've seen ads for iPads.
Most people are not fucking retarded and they're not going to buy something which sucks just because of an ad, no matter how many times the ads are run.
The department manager at my Best Buy was a little more informative. He told me that Best Buy sent 220,000 Touchpads back to HP and HP will then have to worry about selling them. He had called all the other stores which previously sold the TouchPad in my city and none of them had any stock - he didn't know if they sold them or shipped them back.
It does seem sort of odd. HP will presumably be paying the shipping and then have the expense of selling them on their own web site. Best Buy usually likes loss leaders that draw people into the store. I would have thought that if HP wanted to mark them down to $99 that BB would be more than ...
HP's web site says "Out of stock. Check back soon". The manager didn't know whether that meant that they had already sold the 220,000 that BB shipped back or whether it meant that they had sold out of their existing stock and after BB's return, they would show up again on the web site. I'm guessing the latter - there probably hasn't been enough time for them all to be shipped back and resold.
I'm guessing that Best Buy reached a deal with HP earlier this week to take them all back, perhaps even before HP made the announcement it was killing off WebOS hardware. From Best Buy's perspective, they have a lot of loss leaders already, and it's a lot cheaper to send a handful of trucks to their regional distribution centers to deliver the units back to HP than it is to send them to hundreds of stores all over the place.
Anyway, HP's website had them listed as out of stock when they were still displaying the $399/499 prices. Now they have updated the prices to $99/149 and say "check back soon." I'm also guessing that this means that they will have them on their website once they figure out how many they are getting back from retailers.
It is $100 for a touch-screen tablet based on WebOS, which is actually a pretty decent operating system. Compare that to hundreds for the better iPad and this might actually be a good deal for a lot of people. Sure, there's no good support going forward and this will probably limit the product's lifespan, but again, $100. You're probably being overly harsh on it.
It's actually a little bit of a shame how quickly HP hit the wall and splattered.
If somebody is really poor or hurting for money, then I could maybe see them picking up a DeadPad for $99, especially if those people know that they'll remain broke and won't be getting any other tablet in the near future.
Are people so broke and desperate though that they can't even afford a used iPad 1? That would be a much better deal, and it would be a hundred times more useful than a DeadPad.
This HP crash is a good lesson for Apple to learn about pricing. They will see just how fast items sell when the price is significantly lower. Apple won't drop prices below cost but they might change their mind about margins. In all things there is a point where dropping the price causes more sales that make up for the price drop in the overall profit scheme.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
The iCade seems like a cool, little novelty item, I've read about it before. The problem is that there needs to be a standard which virtually all game developers support. When the iCade was released it only supported the Atari games, a few of which I've bought.
Some big company should make a decently priced bluetooth controller for iOS and get a whole lot of developers to support it in their games. That would sell a lot I'm sure. Some iOS games are great with Multi-Touch, but there are other types of games where a controller would be awesome.
I even mentioned that Nintendo should release an iOS bluetooth controller and release some of their classic games. They would make a killing, though it's very unlikely that it's going to happen anytime soon.
True about iCade. But ya gotta start somewhere, and iCade seems like a pretty nice product with lots of potential. Namco would just need to add a little code to make it work.
I just got back from a Best Buy and was told that the $99.00 sale and been cancelled. Hp will just burn all the touchpads.
That last sentence is your supposition, correct? There's no way that anyone at Best Buy said that.
I personally just got back from a Best Buy. Where the TouchPads were? One lone TouchPad case sitting in between two empty display holders and above ten empty shelves.
I think Russel Brand is a very funny guy and makes the ads very interesting. He did a great job demonstrating the features of the TouchPad. He made the TouchPad seem like a fun and useful thing to have. That was the whole point of the ads. I feel they were successful. Whether HP put them out there often enough to get traction was a different story.
Oh, I think they put them out there enough. I've seen it multiple times. The TouchPad isn't failing for a lack of exposure. More like, a lack of iPad.
This HP crash is a good lesson for Apple to learn about pricing. They will see just how fast items sell when the price is significantly lower. Apple won't drop prices below cost but they might change their mind about margins. In all things there is a point where dropping the price causes more sales that make up for the price drop in the overall profit scheme.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
On the contrary, I think Apple will see it as a validation of their strategy. HP is the top seller of PCs in the world. However, they made only 6% on them, and that dragged down the entire company's earnings.
We'll see what happens to Mac sales and pricing when the Ultrabooks start coming out next month, but I'm guessing not much. I'm sure some people are buying MacBook Airs not because of OS X but because of the thinness, but it isn't as if no one has ever sold moderately-priced ultraportables before. Dell and HP aimed directly at the Air with their Adamo and original Envy lines. What I see happening is that the Ultrabooks will become the enterprise notebook of choice. Traveling professionals (e.g. sales people, consultants) will like them because they are easier to carry, and IT departments will like them because they will ship with Windows. It's possible Ultrabooks will resonate with consumers as a more powerful complement to tablets, and Intel's promises with Haswell will mean we can get desktop-like performance out of thinner notebooks, but I see this replacing the existing PC market rather than supplanting Apple's position.
I stopped by Best Buy. The guy there said all stores were told to send their inventory back to the manufacturer; they even had them come in early to do so. His quote was something along the lines of "It's not Best Buy's job to fix HP's mistakes".
Walmart said they had 2 in stock this morning but sold them immediately.
I would guess that buying directly from HP Online would be the best way to actually get one.
This HP crash is a good lesson for Apple to learn about pricing. They will see just how fast items sell when the price is significantly lower. Apple won't drop prices below cost but they might change their mind about margins. In all things there is a point where dropping the price causes more sales that make up for the price drop in the overall profit scheme.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
Your idea is exactly what most manufacturers who aren't Apple have been doing all along. Selling crap for cheap with almost no profit.
Everybody wants to be Apple, and your plan is that Apple should be more like everybody else?
Apple has absolutely nothing to learn from the recent HP disaster.
I've said it before, but I wouldn't mind if Apple raises their prices a little for certain items. There's way too much riff-raff showing up and chaos surrounding their product launches now. I'd be willing to pay a slight premium to keep some of the riff-raff away.
This HP crash is a good lesson for Apple to learn about pricing. They will see just how fast items sell when the price is significantly lower. Apple won't drop prices below cost but they might change their mind about margins. In all things there is a point where dropping the price causes more sales that make up for the price drop in the overall profit scheme.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
There is something Apple will learn from this. It is not what you have said, i.e. lower iPad prices. Far from it.
What Apple will do is call the next iPad 3 - with high resolution screen and better processor - the iPad Pro and charge higher prices. Start at perhaps $699. At the same time, keep the iPad 2 at $499. This will keep the pressure on the competition and allow Apple to increase their margins because most people will go for the iPad 3.
The Stones were some of the early white boy blues musicians, while the early Beatles did rockabilly and rock ad roll covers.
Stones: R&B and blues cover songs dominated the Rolling Stones' early material, ... having been "rooted in traditional verities, in rhythm-and-blues and soul music",... primitive blues typified by Chess Records' artists such as Muddy Waters, who wrote the song "Rollin' Stone" after which the band is named... (From Wikipedia)
Beatles: Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll,... (again from wikipedia)
The early Beatles covered such artists as Little Richard and Carl Perkins, among others, while as pointed out above, the Stones were influenced much more by the artists on Chess.
And please don't claim that "it's really all just the same thing". It ain't.
I probably shouldn't have said it as it just gets people riled up but you are wrong.
I was there. In England, as it happened.
Both groups started off doing a lot of covers but with some original songs. The Stones came to the Beatles to get them to write some original songs for them as they were having trouble selling their own even though they were already successful with the covers as you note. The Stones bought songs off of the Beatles when the Beatles already had copious amounts of original material.
I'm not claiming that the Stones were an outgrowth of the Beatles or were heavily influenced by them but the Beatles were definitely doing their own original material before the Stones and the Stones definitely bought some of their early material off of Lennon and McCartney before they got good at writing their own stuff. There's nothing wrong with that, it's how things were and it's how a group learns to write. But it did happen that way.
Comments
It's amazing that all this change is happening so suddenly and so profoundly.
You can say that again. In a way it's back to the future... Everything old is new again, history repeats itself... thin clients (tablets instead of terminals) and mainframe (cloud instead of s370). Of course it's much more sophisticated than before, but the idea is the same.
HP said, I want to be in the mainframe business and not the terminals cause I just got my a$$ kicked.
Ugh. What a failing ad campaign. Not even close to the iPad commercials in effectiveness. All it managed to convey was that HP could only afford to hire second-tier celebrities to endorse their new non-iPad.
I think Russel Brand is a very funny guy and makes the ads very interesting. He did a great job demonstrating the features of the TouchPad. He made the TouchPad seem like a fun and useful thing to have. That was the whole point of the ads. I feel they were successful. Whether HP put them out there often enough to get traction was a different story.
Maybe they can support the iCade:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/electronics...age_Featured_3
The iCade seems like a cool, little novelty item, I've read about it before. The problem is that there needs to be a standard which virtually all game developers support. When the iCade was released it only supported the Atari games, a few of which I've bought.
Some big company should make a decently priced bluetooth controller for iOS and get a whole lot of developers to support it in their games. That would sell a lot I'm sure. Some iOS games are great with Multi-Touch, but there are other types of games where a controller would be awesome.
I even mentioned that Nintendo should release an iOS bluetooth controller and release some of their classic games. They would make a killing, though it's very unlikely that it's going to happen anytime soon.
You can say that again. In a way it's back to the future... Everything old is new again, history repeats itself... thin clients (tablets instead of terminals) and mainframe (cloud instead of s370). Of course it's much more sophisticated than before, but the idea is the same.
HP said, I want to be in the mainframe business and not the terminals cause I just got my a$$ kicked.
Yes...the thin-client/mainframe versus tablet/cloud parallel is interesting. The question of who will make the tablets is also a parallel to the old days too. Much like Apple more or less invented the "home computer" business with other players like Commodore and Radio Shack trying to get in for a while only to fall off when IBM "standardized" the PC/DOS paradigm...so too now do we have Apple more or less inventing the tablet computer with a bunch of other players coming on but starting to fall off. However, the difference is that there is no "IBM/Microsoft" heavyweight coming into the mix today to knock Apple off the tablet throne like they did way back then. Microsoft to tablets today is not what Microsoft to desktops/laptops was back when they became dominant. They're an inept bumbling organization with a track record of horrendously bad operating systems (even the somewhat respected Windows XP sucks when compared to OS X). Today's Google/Motorola is not going to be to tablets what Microsoft was to desktop/laptops back then either because Android and this ridiculous "open source" paradigm have already lead to failed offerings and fragmentation. Plus, I have a lot more respect for Microsoft than I do for Google (and that is saying something because Microsoft's horrendous quality in Windows OS drove me to Macs where I am now very happy). But at least Microsoft intended to be a real OS company...where Google just wants to sell ads and collect user information to use, perhaps abuse, in ways that scare me. Plus I like and respect Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, and working with the .Net Framework. They're not perfect, but their biggest problem is not themselves but the OS upon which they run.
I think Russel Brand is a very funny guy and makes the ads very interesting. He did a great job demonstrating the features of the TouchPad. He made the TouchPad seem like a fun and useful thing to have. That was the whole point of the ads. I feel they were successful. Whether HP put them out there often enough to get traction was a different story.
Hardly any people know who the hell Russell Brand is and those ads were a terrible failure in every imaginable way. I don't really know who he is, besides knowing that he's some English actor or comedian that has been in some really terrible movies.
And they were certainly out there enough, because quite a few of those TouchPad ads popped up on my cable channels quite frequently, much to my annoyance. I also remember seeing a ton of Xoom ads which were constantly bombarding various TV channels. I've seen more ads for TouchPads and Xooms than I've seen ads for iPads.
Most people are not fucking retarded and they're not going to buy something which sucks just because of an ad, no matter how many times the ads are run.
The department manager at my Best Buy was a little more informative. He told me that Best Buy sent 220,000 Touchpads back to HP and HP will then have to worry about selling them. He had called all the other stores which previously sold the TouchPad in my city and none of them had any stock - he didn't know if they sold them or shipped them back.
It does seem sort of odd. HP will presumably be paying the shipping and then have the expense of selling them on their own web site. Best Buy usually likes loss leaders that draw people into the store. I would have thought that if HP wanted to mark them down to $99 that BB would be more than ...
HP's web site says "Out of stock. Check back soon". The manager didn't know whether that meant that they had already sold the 220,000 that BB shipped back or whether it meant that they had sold out of their existing stock and after BB's return, they would show up again on the web site. I'm guessing the latter - there probably hasn't been enough time for them all to be shipped back and resold.
I'm guessing that Best Buy reached a deal with HP earlier this week to take them all back, perhaps even before HP made the announcement it was killing off WebOS hardware. From Best Buy's perspective, they have a lot of loss leaders already, and it's a lot cheaper to send a handful of trucks to their regional distribution centers to deliver the units back to HP than it is to send them to hundreds of stores all over the place.
Anyway, HP's website had them listed as out of stock when they were still displaying the $399/499 prices. Now they have updated the prices to $99/149 and say "check back soon." I'm also guessing that this means that they will have them on their website once they figure out how many they are getting back from retailers.
It is $100 for a touch-screen tablet based on WebOS, which is actually a pretty decent operating system. Compare that to hundreds for the better iPad and this might actually be a good deal for a lot of people. Sure, there's no good support going forward and this will probably limit the product's lifespan, but again, $100. You're probably being overly harsh on it.
It's actually a little bit of a shame how quickly HP hit the wall and splattered.
If somebody is really poor or hurting for money, then I could maybe see them picking up a DeadPad for $99, especially if those people know that they'll remain broke and won't be getting any other tablet in the near future.
Are people so broke and desperate though that they can't even afford a used iPad 1? That would be a much better deal, and it would be a hundred times more useful than a DeadPad.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
The iCade seems like a cool, little novelty item, I've read about it before. The problem is that there needs to be a standard which virtually all game developers support. When the iCade was released it only supported the Atari games, a few of which I've bought.
Some big company should make a decently priced bluetooth controller for iOS and get a whole lot of developers to support it in their games. That would sell a lot I'm sure. Some iOS games are great with Multi-Touch, but there are other types of games where a controller would be awesome.
I even mentioned that Nintendo should release an iOS bluetooth controller and release some of their classic games. They would make a killing, though it's very unlikely that it's going to happen anytime soon.
True about iCade. But ya gotta start somewhere, and iCade seems like a pretty nice product with lots of potential. Namco would just need to add a little code to make it work.
I just got back from a Best Buy and was told that the $99.00 sale and been cancelled. Hp will just burn all the touchpads.
That last sentence is your supposition, correct? There's no way that anyone at Best Buy said that.
I personally just got back from a Best Buy. Where the TouchPads were? One lone TouchPad case sitting in between two empty display holders and above ten empty shelves.
I think Russel Brand is a very funny guy and makes the ads very interesting. He did a great job demonstrating the features of the TouchPad. He made the TouchPad seem like a fun and useful thing to have. That was the whole point of the ads. I feel they were successful. Whether HP put them out there often enough to get traction was a different story.
Oh, I think they put them out there enough. I've seen it multiple times. The TouchPad isn't failing for a lack of exposure. More like, a lack of iPad.
This HP crash is a good lesson for Apple to learn about pricing. They will see just how fast items sell when the price is significantly lower. Apple won't drop prices below cost but they might change their mind about margins. In all things there is a point where dropping the price causes more sales that make up for the price drop in the overall profit scheme.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
On the contrary, I think Apple will see it as a validation of their strategy. HP is the top seller of PCs in the world. However, they made only 6% on them, and that dragged down the entire company's earnings.
We'll see what happens to Mac sales and pricing when the Ultrabooks start coming out next month, but I'm guessing not much. I'm sure some people are buying MacBook Airs not because of OS X but because of the thinness, but it isn't as if no one has ever sold moderately-priced ultraportables before. Dell and HP aimed directly at the Air with their Adamo and original Envy lines. What I see happening is that the Ultrabooks will become the enterprise notebook of choice. Traveling professionals (e.g. sales people, consultants) will like them because they are easier to carry, and IT departments will like them because they will ship with Windows. It's possible Ultrabooks will resonate with consumers as a more powerful complement to tablets, and Intel's promises with Haswell will mean we can get desktop-like performance out of thinner notebooks, but I see this replacing the existing PC market rather than supplanting Apple's position.
Walmart said they had 2 in stock this morning but sold them immediately.
I would guess that buying directly from HP Online would be the best way to actually get one.
This HP crash is a good lesson for Apple to learn about pricing. They will see just how fast items sell when the price is significantly lower. Apple won't drop prices below cost but they might change their mind about margins. In all things there is a point where dropping the price causes more sales that make up for the price drop in the overall profit scheme.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
Your idea is exactly what most manufacturers who aren't Apple have been doing all along. Selling crap for cheap with almost no profit.
Everybody wants to be Apple, and your plan is that Apple should be more like everybody else?
Apple has absolutely nothing to learn from the recent HP disaster.
I've said it before, but I wouldn't mind if Apple raises their prices a little for certain items. There's way too much riff-raff showing up and chaos surrounding their product launches now. I'd be willing to pay a slight premium to keep some of the riff-raff away.
I just got back from a Best Buy and was told that the $99.00 sale and been cancelled. Hp will just burn all the touchpads.
How dramatic! This is almost like a scandal!
I can see them destroying them rather than deal with the sales and legal liabilities.
How dramatic! This is almost like a scandal!
I can see them destroying them rather than deal with the sales and legal liabilities.
The HP TouchPad is the EV1 of HP's lineup. Take them away from consumers and destroy them all.
Next HP will come out with something analogous to the Hummer and we'll see them spiral out of control into bankruptcy.
This HP crash is a good lesson for Apple to learn about pricing. They will see just how fast items sell when the price is significantly lower. Apple won't drop prices below cost but they might change their mind about margins. In all things there is a point where dropping the price causes more sales that make up for the price drop in the overall profit scheme.
It would be good for all of us if Apple decided to do this with their products. They would get more overall income with lower prices. Their mind share would grow much faster and it would clobber even more of their competition.
There is something Apple will learn from this. It is not what you have said, i.e. lower iPad prices. Far from it.
What Apple will do is call the next iPad 3 - with high resolution screen and better processor - the iPad Pro and charge higher prices. Start at perhaps $699. At the same time, keep the iPad 2 at $499. This will keep the pressure on the competition and allow Apple to increase their margins because most people will go for the iPad 3.
Wrong again.
The Stones were some of the early white boy blues musicians, while the early Beatles did rockabilly and rock ad roll covers.
Stones: R&B and blues cover songs dominated the Rolling Stones' early material, ... having been "rooted in traditional verities, in rhythm-and-blues and soul music",... primitive blues typified by Chess Records' artists such as Muddy Waters, who wrote the song "Rollin' Stone" after which the band is named... (From Wikipedia)
Beatles: Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll,... (again from wikipedia)
The early Beatles covered such artists as Little Richard and Carl Perkins, among others, while as pointed out above, the Stones were influenced much more by the artists on Chess.
And please don't claim that "it's really all just the same thing". It ain't.
I probably shouldn't have said it as it just gets people riled up but you are wrong.
I was there. In England, as it happened.
Both groups started off doing a lot of covers but with some original songs. The Stones came to the Beatles to get them to write some original songs for them as they were having trouble selling their own even though they were already successful with the covers as you note. The Stones bought songs off of the Beatles when the Beatles already had copious amounts of original material.
I'm not claiming that the Stones were an outgrowth of the Beatles or were heavily influenced by them but the Beatles were definitely doing their own original material before the Stones and the Stones definitely bought some of their early material off of Lennon and McCartney before they got good at writing their own stuff. There's nothing wrong with that, it's how things were and it's how a group learns to write. But it did happen that way.